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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Atop the Barndoor Hills

Yankee Farmlands № 92 (Barndoor Hills, Granby, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 92”
Granby, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

Nestled in a cozy valley between the monolithic Barndoor Hills, the stables and white-fenced pastureland of a picturesque horse ranch contrast with the expansive forests of Connecticut’s northwest.

Prior to the advent of automobiles in the 20th century, horses were a ubiquitous mode of transportation throughout the United States. And, perhaps thanks to Wild West films, it’s not hard for us these days to envision an era when horses were commonplace. But when did these animals arrive in New England?

Native Americans living in New England did not possess horses prior to European contact. And although the Pilgrims were exceptionally familiar with horses in their homeland, they neglected to bring any along on their pioneering voyage to establish Plymouth on the Massachusetts coast in 1620. Explicit mention of a horse in Southern New England doesn’t appear in records until 1632, when the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony mentions riding the “Governor’s mare” while traveling between villages.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

McCook’s Refuge

McCook's Refuge (McCook Point Park, East Lyme, Connecticut)
“McCook’s Refuge”
McCook Point Park, East Lyme, Connecticut
© 2017 J. G. Coleman

Early May doesn’t generally present the most welcoming beach weather in Southern New England, but it’s far preferable to the biting, 15° F winds that I encountered at McCook Point before dawn during the first days of March this past winter.

Found along the Connecticut coast on the sandy shores of Niantic, McCook’s Point had been known instead as Champlain’s Point prior to the mid-1800s. It wasn’t until a theology professor out of East Hartford, Reverend John James McCook, began spending summers there in 1869 that the proverbial seed was planted for a change of names.

What probably cemented McCook’s name on the point was a legal battle with state government in the 1920s. A small, state-operated tuberculosis hospital had been established nearby and it quickly became clear that a larger facility was required. McCook and his family refused to sell their 16-acre property to accommodate the hospital expansion and even fought the state in court when an attempt was made to condemn the property. The McCook family prevailed and the state abandoned its efforts in 1930, just three years after old John McCook passed away.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Whigville, April’s End

Whigville, April's End (Whigville Falls, Burlington, Connecticut)
“Whigville, April’s End”
Whigville Falls, Burlington, Connecticut
© 2017 J. G. Coleman

It’s waterfall season, folks: that exciting window in the second half of spring after the leaves start emerging but before waterfalls on smaller woodland brooks are rendered as trickles by warm, dry summer weather.

Whigville Falls (above), a little-known cataract in Burlington, hasn’t appeared in my work before; I scouted it out this past winter and had been waiting for just the right conditions before heading back. When a touch of morning mist was forecast a couple days ago, I knew it was time!

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Quiet Store in the Quiet Corner

Yankee Farmlands № 90 (Farm stand in Eastford, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 90”
Eastford, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

A scattering of pumpkins and bushels of fresh squash and gourds sit by the roadside beckoning to passersby to visit this farm store in Connecticut’s Quiet Corner. Potted chrysanthemums sit in arrangement beside the store’s corrugated walls, enjoying some mid-day sunlight as October wanes.

There’s good reason that Eastford and surrounding towns in Northeastern Connecticut have come to be referred to affectionately as the “The Quiet Corner”. With only about 60 people per square mile, Eastford is among the most sparsely populated towns in the entire state, and that trend towards being a quiet, out-of-the-way hamlet stretches back well over a century.

Even in the late 1800s, at a time when a great deal of Connecticut was booming with industrial might, Eastford was arguably languishing. The town was “touched by no railroad”, according to an 1881 state agricultural report. The account went on, noting that Eastford had actually “lost population since… 1870” and lacked any significant manufacturing or markets.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

In the Hills of Salisbury

Yankee Farmlands № 89 (farm in Salisbury, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 89”
Salisbury, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

Barns nestle into the shadowy foot of a steep hill in Connecticut’s rugged northwest. The forest canopy has noticeably thinned as the latter days of October grip the landscape, only evergreens and a few stubborn broadleaves retaining their foliage.

In the 1830s, J. W. Barber described Salisbury not only as a farming community, but also as being “much celebrated for its very rich and productive iron mines”. The first forge had been constructed there in 1732 and was followed in time by several dozen more that came to dot the Housatonic Valley in the 19th century. Barber reported that thousands of tons of ore were being extracted each year from Salisbury alone at a site referred to as “Old Ore Hill”.

But, as was the story with so many of New England’s early industrial pursuits, the burgeoning population centers further west gradually made it less practical to have iron operations centered in the hills of the Housatonic Valley. In 1923, not quite a century after Barber swooned over Connecticut’s mighty iron mines, the last of the state’s blast furnaces was extinguished. Today, the sparsely-settled forests of Salisbury offer little trace of its illustrious industrial past.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Hermit

Hermit (Great Mountain Forest, Norfolk, Connecticut)
“Hermit”
Great Mountain Forest, Norfolk, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

A solitary tree trunk whorled with spindly branches stands tall amidst open meadows like some somber monument. Surrounding woodlands veiled in drifting mist offer an airy, pastel backdrop for the stark, ghostly silhouette.

Bristling with some 6,000 acres of woodlands in Norfolk and Canaan, Great Mountain Forest is a unique expanse of wildlands within Connecticut’s Northwest Hills. It’s not a state-owned park, as might be expected with such a large forest, nor is it a “preserve” in the sense of a natural place that is generally left entirely to the devices of nature.

Instead, Great Mountain Forest is a “multi-use” forest where a range of seemingly contradictory uses are expertly coalesced under private, non-profit management. Safeguarding of wilds and wildlife, education and recreation go hand in hand with sustainable management that promotes sensible harvest and conservation-minded administration.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Pumpkins by the Thousands

"Yankee Farmlands № 88" (Pumpkin patch in Enfield, Connecticut)

 “Yankee Farmlands № 88”
Enfield, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

With the color-rich forests of Northern Connecticut having reached a kaleidoscopic peak in mid-October, pumpkin patches yield the year’s final crop amidst a tangle of withering vines.

Pumpkins are a crop which is uniquely associated with autumn in the United States, whether it’s being called upon to fill pies or serve as decoration. Given that the treasured Connecticut Field Pumpkin is America’s traditional variety, it’s only fitting that they would enjoy a strong foothold in the Nutmeg State.

In fact, upwards of a million pumpkins are grown across Connecticut each year, an impressive annual haul which keeps the state well-stocked as leaves change and Halloween gives way to Thanksgiving. But when it comes to growing pumpkins on a massive scale, Illinois is the undisputed leader, producing over 300 million pounds of pumpkins on 15,000 acres of farmland in 2015 alone!

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

The Broadleaf Harvest

"Yankee Farmlands № 87" (Tobacco shed in Windsor, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 87”
Windsor, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

Beside radiant autumn forests flush with an October palette, shadows embrace a rickety old tobacco shed freshly divested of its cured crop. Bare tobacco stalks, having been stripped of their leaves, lay piled upon a trailer ready to be carted away.

“Connecticut broadleaf tobacco is the Dangerfield of the cigar industry, a rumpled everyman tobacco that gets little respect,” wrote one journalist, kicking off a piece in a Cigar Aficionado magazine. And there’s truth to that assessment: broadleaf lives in the proverbial shadow of world-famous Connecticut shade tobacco, the two varieties forever vying for turf in the same fertile soils of the Connecticut Valley.

But while Connecticut broadleaf may not enjoy the same mystique as its shade-grown counterpart, its bold taste –described as a “heavy, muscular flavor” in the same Aficionado article– nonetheless earns it a spot in everything from machine-made Backwoods cigars to premium, hand-crafted maduros.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Contemplating Massacoe

"Contemplating Massacoe" (Great Pond at Massacoe State Forest, Simsbury, Connecticut)
“Contemplating Massacoe”
Great Pond at Massacoe State Forest, Simsbury, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

Tufts of parched marsh reeds catch stray sunlight as a welcoming March day comes to a close in Northern Connecticut. Snow may have vanished from the lake shore, but winter surreptitiously lingers forth in an icy glaze which grips the deepening shadows.

“Great Pond” seems a rather dramatic title for an ancient, marshy lake of just 25 acres in the north of Simsbury. But despite being carved by brooks and draped with several serpentine miles of the Farmington River, the town peculiarly lacks many standing bodies of water. Great Pond, as it would happen, is the largest lake in Simsbury.

"Beaver Country" (Great Pond at Massacoe State Forest, Simsbury, Connecticut)
“Beaver Country”
Great Pond at Massacoe State Forest, Simsbury, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

And while much can be said about its history, perhaps the most novel story of Great Pond arose in 1942 when a box turtle was discovered beside the lake with “C.E.B. 1877” etched into its shell. Lo and behold, local man Clayton E. Bacon, who was 83 years old at that time, got wind of the find and confirmed that he’d scratched his initials into the turtle’s shell as a teenager 65 years earlier! Having made the local news, the turtle was released alive, though it was never found again.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Bull’s Lattice

"Bull’s Lattice" (Bull's Bridge, Kent, Connecticut)
“Bull’s Lattice”
Bull’s Bridge, Kent, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

The timber-framed covered bridges which have become such beloved emblems of historical New England are few and far between in Connecticut these days. Only three such bridges remain of the several dozen that once spanned rivers and streams from one corner of the state to the other during the 1800s.

Of course, from a practical standpoint, everyone benefited from the phasing out of timber bridges. Compared to the iron and reinforced concrete designs that followed, timber bridges tended to be rather short-lived. If they weren’t being washed away in floods or burning down, they were lucky to last two decades before wear and rot compelled a full rebuild.

But over the course of their roughly 75-year reign during the 19th century, the timber-truss covered bridge represented the zenith in bridge technology. And for what it’s worth, there was something inherently beautiful about those old timber trusses that has simply been lost to the austere I-beams and textured concrete of today’s crossings.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Corn & The Litchfield Hills

Yankee Farmlands № 86 (Roxbury, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 86”
Roxbury, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

Crowded stalks of corn reach skyward from a humid field, the crops abruptly giving way to misty woodlands and the dreamy silhouettes of Connecticut’s Litchfield Hills.

While the crops grown throughout New England these days span a broad range from apples and blueberries to green beans and pumpkins, there’s no question that corn still reigns supreme. Whether for grain or silage, corn occupies tens of thousands of acres throughout the state. The only crop more common is one that would never make it to our dinner plates: hay and other forage crops that generally feed farm animals.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

October & Tomatoes

Yankee Farmlands № 85 (Field of tomatoes, Cheshire, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 85”
Field of tomatoes, Cheshire, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

As dawn breaks over the Naugatuck Valley in early October, thousands of stakes still dot a rolling field of tomato plants and bear the weight of the season’s waning crop. Barns peer down over the land from atop the farm as woodlands beyond climb ever higher toward a cerulean sky daubed with airy clouds.

Although the English were experimenting in their gardens with an exotic fruit known as the tomato as early as the 1500s, it would be a long time before they grew popular. Perhaps because the plant’s blossoms bore resemblance to poisonous wildflowers known as deadly nightshades, the tomato was widely believed to be toxic.

In fact, tomatoes were unheard of in the British colonies of North America for quite some time, with the earliest record of their cultivation appearing in the Carolinas in the early 1700s. Despite some lingering suspicions of the plant in America, tomato recipes began emerging en masse during the early 19th century. By the mid-1800s, it seems that the fallacy of the poison tomato, honored as common knowledge for two centuries, had finally been put to rest.

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